


Roz and Gideon Are Dead

by millbot



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A lil' bit of fluff, Alternate Canon, Alternate Ending, Canon Queer Relationship, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gay Male Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, Lesbian Sex, M/M, Male Character of Color, Overheard Sex, Queer Themes, Swearing, vaguely shakesperean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:58:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6266782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millbot/pseuds/millbot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode 307 ("Thirteen") of "The 100" as seen through the eyes of Lexa's most trusted guards--and longtime couple--Roz and Gideon. And don't worry, this time it ends the right way.</p>
<p>A tribute to the Tom Stoppard play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (so might be instructive to read/be familiar with that first - and, in turn, "Hamlet" as well), and my way of dealing with the absolute grief and rage felt at the end of episode 307.</p>
<p>In short: Screw you, JRoth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roz and Gideon Are Dead

**"Roz and Gideon Are Dead"**

_(spoilers for episode 307 ("Thirteen") of "The 100")_

 

The first hints of morning light streaked the sky outside the open window a dusky blue-gray, and the breeze brought up smells from the kitchen fires just a few floors below in the tower. Roz was powerfully hungry, his stomach grumbling restlessly after a long guard shift. Gideon smiled when he heard the gurgles, yawned, and arced his back in a stretch that resulted in a loud _pop_.

“Almost quitting time,” Gideon said. His partner sighed and scratched at his unkempt, fire-red mop of hair.

“Almost breakfast time, more like it,” Roz grumbled. “I hate night shift. And she knows it.”  
  
“She also has to avoid playing favorites,” Gideon countered gently. “You know how it would look if we never got this assignment. The other guys would riot. Heda has enough on her plate right now without her own guard pitching a fit over _scheduling_.”

Roz grunted but let the subject drop. Gideon couldn't help but grin at how petulant hunger and sleepiness tended to make Roz. He found it ridiculously endearing, though would never admit it out loud. He'd never hear the end of it.

A flock of geese flew in formation outside the window, above the rooftops of a mostly still sleeping Polis. Gideon loved this time of morning, before most anyone was up and about, when it was so quiet all you could hear were the sounds of birds and the ever present wind.

And footsteps. Gideon slapped Roz across the belly and both men immediately snapped to attention. The blonde woman was approaching rapidly, coming down the hallway from the direction of her own room, an intent look on her face. Normally, Gideon and Roz would stop anyone wishing to gain access to their heda's own bed chambers, but this one had been granted special permission to come and go as she pleased.

To her credit, however, the sky girl always stopped to greet the two guards, sometimes even exchanging a few pleasantries with them. She'd learned their names. It was more than most of the other so-called dignitaries and ambassadors ever bothered with. Gideon was used to it, but Roz never seemed able to get over how callous the leaders and representatives of the various clans could be toward them. He was awfully sensitive for such a big brute. Gideon loved it.

This morning was not a time for pleasantries, however, and they knew it. The day before, Ascension Day, had been unexpectedly wracked with drama once Semet and his villagers had arrived. Gideon was still kicking himself for being too slow to intercept the assassination attempt. In the end, it had been the prattling fleimkappa _,_ Titus, who'd disarmed and killed Semet as he'd lunged toward heda with a knife, set on blood.

Anyway, it had put an abrupt end to the ceremonies and celebration. Roz had been despondent over the cancellation of the feast. And then they'd been informed that they were needed on guard duty for the night. Heda didn't trust anyone else as much as Gideon and Roz—they'd been by her side since her own ascension those years ago, had known one another since even before that. No one was more loyal or trustworthy. They took pride in that, even when Roz complained about the hours.

And here was the woman at the center of so much of the drama. The infamous Wanheda, Mountain Slayer, ambassador to the Thirteenth Clan. _Totally fucking in love with heda and completely in denial about it,_ Gideon mused. Roz had been less circumspect. He frequently teased the sky girl, once she'd moved passed the spitting angry phase of their relationship.

This morning she attempted a smile but it was clear there was too much on her mind for anything more. Roz was even uncharacteristically restrained and simply nodded as he stepped aside to let her through the doors.

There was the blockade. Skaikru had crossed too many lines, killed too many of their people for heda to ignore the insults any longer. She was dedicated to making peace, but in the end that couldn't mean letting the newcomers get away with anything they liked. It was hard enough convincing Trikru people to accept “blood must not have blood” as their new code. The blockade and its accompanying kill order, then, was a compromise, and a rather brilliant one at that, he thought. So, Gideon could only assume, Wanheda had come to say her goodbyes. She would need to return to her own people to avoid the kill order.

“That pretty new dagger of yours says they finally fuck.”

Gideon shot Roz a cross look. “You're disgusting sometimes, you know that?”

“If you think I'm wrong, take the bet.”

“I'm not gambling on heda like that,” he shot back. “Things are too tense right now. Wanheda will say goodbye and go back to her people. This is about duty, not love.”

“They're going to fuck.”

Gideon held his tongue for a moment and looked straight ahead. The sun had crept closer to the horizon line and was washing the sky in reds. He could hear faint sounds of the two women talking behind the doors.

“My dagger, then,” he said.

“Done. Just you wait,” Roz replied, pleased and confident. Gideon hated him. But he loved him, too, and frankly it made their own assignations all the more charged. Truth be told, being around the two women and the unrelenting tension between them over the past few weeks had seemed to electrify the air around _everyone_ in the tower. Well, everyone but Titus, but the goat hardly counted.

“Wanheda has to leave today, before the sun is all the way up,” Roz went on. “You think she'll go without finally making a move? There's no way to know when or if they'll even see each other again.” When Gideon didn't rise to the bait and remained silent, he added. “I mean, that's what I would do.”

“ _You_ would fuck in the middle of an acid fog attack,” Gideon offered.

“And you wouldn't complain,” he shot back. Gideon felt his cheeks flush. Roz saw it, and delighted in the reaction. It wasn't easy to tell when his partner actually blushed; his dark brown skin tended to hide it well, unlike his own painfully pale self. Roz instead learned to read physical cues, like the way Gideon's jaw muscles would tense up when he was angry or uncomfortable.

“I'd complain when my eyes and cock burned off.”

That shut Roz up for a moment and he grunted uncomfortably at the mental image. Gideon was always doing that, bringing up the worst case scenario to everything, ruining his fun. It made him all the more determined to force that man to _have_ fun at all, even if just for a moment. It was their game, their push and pull. That and the sex. He liked that part most of all.

Gideon was the first to hear the sound. He wasn't confident what it was the first time so kept quiet, not particularly wanting to lose a bet first thing in the morning. By the third and fourth time he heard it, though, it was unmistakable. Rhythmic. No longer the low tones of two people talking quietly, but definitely the higher pitched gasps and moans that could only mean the two women had _finally_ decided to admit to each other what everyone else in the tower had known for a long time.

When Roz finally picked up on it, a shit eating grin spread across his cheeks.

“ _Told you,”_ he said, delighted. Gideon hissed at him to be quiet.

“She trusts us to be _discreet_ , Roz, shut your trap.”

“Just you and me, Gid,” Roz countered. “But you know this will get out faster than a jack rabbit with its tail on fire.”

He was right, of course. News traveled at dizzying speeds in the tower and throughout all of Polis. At this point Gideon wouldn't be surprised to learn that most of the common folk knew about the relationship between their heda and the sky girl. The looks they'd given one another at the Ice Nation challenge had practically been smoldering enough to set the thatched roofs on fire. Which would have been especially bad, given the depleted state of their fire crews. The repeated massacres of their warriors by Skaikru had taken their toll on the overall manpower available to tackle basic necessities in the capitol. It was a good thing Wanheda had proven to be so charming and that his heda seemed to love her so, because otherwise Gideon was not a great admirer of her people and would have been content to see her killed long ago. It was a testament to her strength of character that she'd won him over at all.

 

The pleasure noises came and went, then steadily began to increase in frequency and volume. Roz just smiled and chuckled appreciatively. Gideon felt uncomfortable. They'd known heda since they were all just young runts in training—her separated out to work with the fellow nightbloods, he and Roz cordoned off to learn from the warriors. Gideon thought of her like a sister in many ways. And those were definitely mostly her noises.

"Wanheda is slaying more than the Mountain,” Roz laughed.

“Show some respect, you brute!” Gideon shot back. When he saw a look of genuine hurt on Roz's face, though, he felt his resolve melt a little. “I'm sorry, it's just...look, I'm happy Lexa has finally found someone who can give her this kind of happiness again, I really am.”

Roz nodded solemnly. “I had wondered, after Costia, if it would ever happen. I still feel fucking terrible about that. Can't imagine how she's felt.”

Gideon felt fucking terrible about it, too. It was one of his greatest regrets, something he regarded as their biggest failing to their Commander. But it had not been them assigned to guard her doors the night the Ice Nation ambassador had delivered Costia's severed head directly to Lexa's bed. Gideon and Roz were on ground perimeter duty that night. He still remembered how it had felt as though his heart had dropped out through his stomach when they'd gotten word of what happened. Lexa, their strong, resilient heda, had been utterly devastated. Gideon had never seen her like that, so defeated, so lost. She'd faced so much in her young life, always with that steely determination to see things through to victory. Merciless, driven. But losing Costia, especially in that way, seemed to gut her. Weeks followed where she barely left her bed chamber, would only see Anya or Titus, and then for very short visits.

When she'd finally emerged, Lexa had lost considerable weight, her usually piercing green eyes sunken slightly into gray-lined sockets. But she looked _determined_ again. Hungry. And after that, she'd dedicated herself to the goal of uniting the twelve clans with a renewed fervor no one had quite seen in her before. And when heda decided to do something, she got that thing done. Even though it had meant forgiving the Ice Nation and allowing them to join the coalition as well. That still left Gideon in awe. No Commander had ever achieved as much as Lexa, had never shown such vision or willingness to bend the way things had usually been done to accomplish something greater.

It was, both he and Roz could see, an incredibly heavy burden to be carried by one woman, strong though Lexa undoubtedly was. So he was glad, he had to admit, that she and Clarke had found one another. They seemed well matched, and that, Gideon had to imagine, was as rare a thing for the sky girl as for their heda.

The lovemaking had reached its crescendo in the room behind the doors—it sounded like a good one, and Roz punched his lover in the shoulder as a show of approval, then waggled his fingers in a playful demand. Gideon grudgingly handed over his new knife, and Roz flipped it over in one hand, feeling its weight.

Quiet descended once again. The sun finally climbed its way over the tree line and threw golden light across all of Polis. From their vantage point this high up in the tower, it was always an especially breathtaking sight.

Gideon passed his spear to the opposite hand and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. It had been a long shift and his back was beginning to ache.

They heard footsteps approaching down the hallway then and both men turned to look toward the sound.

A bald, tattooed head emerged from the murk of the windowless hall into the light of the antechamber where they stood. Titus blinked calmly at the guards and bowed his smooth pate ever so slightly.

“Good morning to you both,” he said.

“Good morning, Titus,” Gideon answered. Roz frowned slightly at the man. _Always the worst poker face in the room_ , Gideon mused. He was glad poker had survived the apocalypse, if for no other reason that it was something he knew he could always beat Roz at.

“Is heda within?” Titus asked. He spoke calmly, but Gideon noticed that the fleimkappa's hands, clasped at his front, were trembling slightly. There was also clearly blood under his finger nails. That wasn't uncommon, necessarily. The mystic was always up to strange things.

“Heda is...indisposed at the moment,” Gideon answered.

“Sky girl's in there with her,” Roz added casually. Titus' left eye twitched ever so slightly. It was common knowledge that the heda's most trusted adviser positively detested Clarke. He had tried to mask it, but Gideon and Roz were no fools. And Roz had to admit, it gave him some small pleasure to be the one to essentially tell Titus that the two had just consummated the relationship.

“I will try back later,” Titus said tersely. He stared hard at the door behind the two men for a passing second and then turned and walked briskly back down the hallway. Gideon and Roz exchanged a look.

“You shouldn't have told him,” Gideon said. Roz just shrugged. A moment later, Titus came hurrying back, this time dragging along the bloodied and beaten form of a young man with rope binding his wrists together and a gag stuffed into his mouth. Neither Gideon or Roz recognized the boy, but he was dressed like Skaikru.

“This is none of your concern,” Titus said gruffly as he passed them by. They were headed in the direction of the rooms where Wanheda had been staying, but there were other rooms beyond that, and they had seen Titus up to all sorts of weird shit over the years. Anyway, their orders were to remain at guard until relieved by the next shift, which would be just moments from now.

Once Titus and his captor were out of earshot, Roz turned to Gideon. “Should we check into that when our relief comes?”

“You heard him, it's not our concern,” Gideon answered. He was curious, though. There seemed to be no end to intrigue since the sky people had crashed into their home and started mucking things up. But it wasn't their job to spy, just to guard. That's what Lexa trusted them to do, so that's what they would do.

A new round of suspicious noises began to drift out from behind the doors. This time they were slightly lower in pitch, more growling and unfamiliar, and Gideon knew the tables had turned on Clarke.

“Oh that is definitely Wanheda _,_ ” Roz noted approvingly. “She's in for it now.”

Gideon remembered the times they'd pulled guard duty on nights when Costia stayed over. The girl was... _loud_. It made him swallow hard just to think about it—though certainly matters were not helped by what he was hearing now.

“It's already late, she should be leaving,” Gideon mused. “Clarke will be caught behind the blockade, the sun is already up.”

“Try telling them that right now,” Roz said just as a particularly loud moan pierced the air.

Gideon turned and took a step toward the doors, suddenly determined to do his duty even if it meant interrupting and likely making heda hate him for the next week. He wasn't about to see Clarke meet a similar fate to Costia, or to see his heda sent back into the abyss of depression. Not now, when the situation was so fraught.

Another series of shouts stopped him dead in his tracks. Gideon closed his eyes and sighed, shoulders slumped in defeat. Things were reaching a peak again and even he couldn't bring himself to ruin that kind of moment.

“She can't hold us responsible when this goes sideways on them both!” he proclaimed, already feeling useless.

“They can take care of themselves, Gid,” Roz said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. The burlier man gripped Gideon's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Let them have this.”

Resigned, Gideon once again took up his position to the left of the door. He could feel Roz's eyes still on him. Finally, the other man took the two steps across the entryway to stand directly in front of his lover and took Gideon's slender face in his hands.

“You worry too much,” Roz said, his voice a low rumble. “We serve our heda best with clear heads and trusting hearts. She can handle this. Clarke can handle this.”

Gideon met Roz's dark green eyes and let himself stay there for a moment, reveling in the way this man could look right into his core without flinching. Instead, Roz leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth. Gideon felt a flash of heat that shot straight to his groin, but Roz pulled away before his body got any more visible ideas.

“We will offer to escort _Wanheda_ ourselves, if need be, to make sure she gets out safely,” Roz offered. It sometimes astounded Gideon how Roz could say and do the absolute right thing in a difficult moment. For a guy who spent so much time joking about fucking and hunting, who could belch loud enough to scare away even the dim-witted two-faced horses—the man had _layers_. Even if he often covered them with absolute filth.

Before Gideon had time to get overly moony thinking about it all, though, the activity in the bed chamber hit a fever pitch. Clarke's throaty “HOLY FUCK!” rang off the walls and out the open window to dissipate among the birds and the breeze. After that, things quieted down considerably.

Roz gave Gideon a quick slap on the butt and returned to his position. Gideon couldn't help but chuckle softly. Maybe things would be fine—or as fine as they could be, given the circumstances. They could help Clarke get behind the blockade, back to her people, unharmed. Lexa would work to keep the blockade in place while Clarke agitated from within to see the tyrant Pike overthrown and, hopefully, help Skaikru find it's fucking wits again. Eventually, fates willing, the two leaders would be reunited under better conditions. And the clans might finally stop fighting one another and instead focus on building a real nation, especially now that the Mountain Men had been neutralized and could no longer terrorize or enslave them.

It felt a little like hope. It was, Gideon realized, a very unfamiliar thing.

The door clicked open behind them and Gideon snapped out of his thoughts and to rigid attention. The blonde sky girl strode purposefully from the room and a few paces out into the hallway before stopping. She turned abruptly to face the two guards, stony faced for a moment, but then allowed a wide grin to transform her red flushed face.

Roz gave her a thumbs up. Gideon just shook his head and smiled. Clarke ran her hands through her hair and tried to make herself look somewhat less recently-fucked, though didn't really seem to care to make a serious effort. She cleared her throat.

“Take care of her, please.”

“We will, always,” Gideon said solemnly. The three exchanged a nod of understanding and then Clarke set off toward her room. Lexa emerged then, still tying up the shoulder straps of her shirt. Her round, tanned cheeks were washed over with a dark flush of color—the hue unique to nightbloods—and a few droplets of sweat still dappled her forehead. Her hair, usually so carefully plaited, tumbled down messily across one shoulder.

“You will help me see to it that Clarke makes it out of Polis and behind the line unharmed.” Despite her somewhat disheveled appearance, Lexa was very much in heda mode again. Roz and Gideon both nodded. “Good.” She paused. The briefest hint of a smile crossed her face, then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “Thank you.”

Two guards, Yoshua and Ikel, came strolling down the hallway then. It was their shift relief. Gideon greeted them gratefully, anxious to go back to their quarters to change, grab a few bites, and get ready for the ride out with Clarke.

“Leidon, heda,” Gideon said with a slight bow. She returned the gesture and the two men took their leave. Gideon heard the new guards give the customary greeting, followed by the sound of Lexa returning to her quarters.

The guard barracks were a few floors below. Roz and Gideon went about the business of preparing for the journey ahead, gathering food and gear and changing into their riding clothes. Honestly, in addition to feeling like an important mission, it was always good to have the excuse to leave the tower and go ranging. They spent too much time up in the clouds, since it took so much manpower to get there, and only came down on occasions when their duty called for it. Roz especially missed being out on a campaign. The time they'd spent pursuing first Skaikru and then the Mountain Men had been a particularly heady one for them both.

They were making their way toward the lift shaft when all hell seemed to break loose. Suddenly there were other guards running through the hallway, shouting incoherently, all heading toward the stairs up. A few of the visiting clan ambassadors had also joined the rush, they saw. Gideon and Roz couldn't help but get caught up in the flow of bodies, curious and filled with dread all at once.

People were crowding into the throne room, which shared the floor with Lexa's bed chamber but was on the other side of the tower from it. Roz tried to push his way through the crush, Gideon right on his tail. The commotion was almost deafening, but he couldn't make out what any of it was about.

Finally, they pushed through to a break in the crowd just in front of the throne, where Titus stood with his hands raised in the air, trying to quiet the assemblage.

“ _Roz, look,”_ Gideon breathed. He pointed, dumbfounded. Sprawled there at Titus' feet, black blood pooling on the floor beneath her neck and staining the middle of her shirt, was the body of their heda.

“Lexa!” Roz shouted. He flung himself to the ground and grabbed the young Commander by the shoulders, shaking her. Gideon approached more slowly, unable to fully comprehend what he was seeing.

_She's dead. She's dead. She's dead._

Titus put his hand on Roz's head and tried to stop him, but the bigger man slapped away the appendage and went back to trying to rouse her.

“Stop!” Titus finally boomed. “She's gone.”

The guard slumped back onto his haunches, a tear sliding down his unshaven cheek. Gideon had never seen Roz so defeated. Truth be told, he probably looked much the same. His mind was reeling, barely able to keep up with what was happening. The room had gone mostly silent at Titus' proclamation. He took the opportunity to speak again, addressing the audience.

“Heda stedaun. We must begin the Conclave, and turn to the Spirit of the Commander to choose our new leader.”

_So fast._ None of it made sense. Where was Clarke? Gideon looked around the room but didn't see the sky girl anywhere.

“What the hell happened?” he demanded. Titus looked equal parts annoyed and heartbroken.

“We must convene all of the natblida for the Conclave as soon as possible.”

“You didn't answer my question!” Gideon shouted, letting his anger override any deference he'd been trained to have toward the Flamekeeper. He could feel tears threatening to choke him and fought to maintain some semblance of composure. _We need to find Clarke. We have to keep her safe._ Lexa had asked them to do it, had trusted them. It was all he could think of now.

Roz got to his feet, his hands now coated in black blood. Everyone in the room had gone silent at the altercation, and Titus began to unsheathe a ceremonial but very sharp dagger he kept hidden under his cowl. Roz ignored it and looked ready to throttle Titus right then and there, and suddenly Gideon understood what a precarious situation they had stumbled into. Quickly, he grabbed Roz around a bicep and dragged him back away from the throne and their dead Commander.

“We need to _go_ , Roz,” he hissed into the man's ear. Roz wanted to fight him, and Titus, and everyone in the damn room, but some instinct to trust his lover took over and he allowed himself to be led back into the crowd of onlookers and back toward the door.

They could hear the Flamekeeper launching into some chant or another as they made their exit. No one in the room paid them any attention as they went, and for that Gideon was thankful. Guards were loyal to the Commander as a title. They were not supposed to favor any one holder of that title over another, but Titus in particular understood the unique place Gideon and Roz held with Lexa. And Titus could be a vindictive man. If he guessed for a moment that either of their loyalties to the job might waver, more than their positions might be at stake.

Gideon's mind was spinning. The only thing it could latch onto was--

“Where is Clarke?” he said aloud. Roz turned to face him. They didn't need to say anything, the agreement passed silently. Quickly, they set off back down the hallway toward Wanheda's room.

The doors had been locked from the outside. Without hesitating, Gideon undid the latch and bowled into the room. Clarke was sitting on the bed, staring at nothing, her face a mask of shock and despair. Her hands were covered in the same black blood that Roz's were, and it had stained the front of her shirt as well. Gideon hurried over and knelt in front of her.

For his part, Roz had stopped dead in his tracks upon seeing the other occupant of the room. It was that Skaikru kid again, the one Titus had hauled passed them earlier, bound and beaten. He was still bloody, but he was free of the restraints now and had been anxiously pacing the floor when they'd barged in. Now he and Roz were just staring at one another in a frozen face off.

“Who are you?” Roz finally growled.

“Who the fuck are _you?”_ the boy shot back. For someone who'd clearly been beaten to within an inch of his life, the Skaikru kid sure was defiant. Roz had to admire it a little.

“Murphy, it's all right,” Clarke said, her voice a quiet rasp. Gideon took her hands in his and looked straight into her blue-gray eyes. She looked utterly lost.

“Clarke,” he said, “what has happened here?”

The usually stoic young woman held his gaze for a long moment, seemingly uncomprehending of the question. Finally, she blinked and came back from whatever place she'd been before.

“Titus shot her.”

Gideon could practically hear the sound of Roz's neck spinning on its axis. The other man stomped away from Murphy and came to stand directly behind where Gideon still knelt.

“Say that again?” He ground out the words slowly.

“He meant to shoot me,” Clarke went on, her voice hollow. “He was going to blame it on my friend, so Lexa would declare war on Skaikru. But she came in and saw what was happening, and she...she took the bullet that was meant for me.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke the last admission. She looked ready to sob openly, which Gideon could only assume she had already done many times before they'd arrived.

“That _branwada_ piece of _shit_!” Roz barked.

The revelation made the situation all the more grave, Gideon realized. If they didn't move to get Clarke out of the tower and away from Polis immediately, he could only guess how Titus might spin the whole thing. They were all in danger now.

“Roz, we have to get them out of here, _now_.”

“No, I should stay,” Clarke said and got to her feet. “I should make sure I know who the new Commander will be. We have to, I have to make sure they go along with Lexa's plan for Skaikru and don't declare war instead.”

Gideon could tell she had gone into a sort of shock defense mode, all automatic and unthinking. Her friend, Murphy, apparently noticed as well. He went to her side and placed a tentative hand on her arm.

“Clarke, we're not safe here. If these two can get us out, now seems like the time to go, while everyone else is distracted.”

“Won't that put you both in danger, too?” she said after a moment.

“We'll be marked the minute Titus finds out we came here to see you,” Gideon said, knowing it was true as soon as the words passed his lips. “Let us help you escape. Lexa wanted that. Please let us do that for her.”

Clarke met his eyes again and seemed to finally come back to the gravity of the present moment. She nodded, and went about gathering up her few things into a rucksack that had been tucked away under the bed.

Roz took the lead, peaking his head out the doors to make sure no one was in the hallway outside. Murphy followed him once it was indicated that the coast was clear, with Clarke and Gideon bringing up the rear. Wordlessly, they hurried toward the lift shaft and piled onto the cramped platform. Roz gave a thick length of rope two sharp pulls, and shortly thereafter the platform lurched into action, slowly lowering them down floor by floor.

“Try to act natural,” Gideon advised as they went. “It's unlikely news has spread to the lower floors or out to the ground just yet. If anyone asks, we're escorting you back to your people, per the Commander's orders. No more, no less.” Murphy and Clarke nodded in understanding. Roz fidgeted with the dagger he'd won in their bet, twirling it between his hands. Gideon stared back up the shaft at the floors disappearing overhead.

Their small group made it to the ground floor and out to the stables without anything seeming amiss. News of the heda's death had not made it down just yet, it seemed, and it was a stroke of luck for them. Two horses had already been made ready for Clarke's journey, and it was a simple matter of telling the stable boy that the Commander had ordered extra guards to accompany her on the trip. The kid eyed Murphy's scarred and bleeding face warily but obeyed without complaint, saddling up two more mounts and getting the posse underway.

They were through the city streets and out into the countryside before anyone spoke again. It was Roz who broke the tense silence, his voice incredulous.

“What a stupid fucking plan,” he spat.

“What?” Gideon said, startled.

“Titus. He thought he could shoot Clarke, blame it on this kid, and that would make Lexa throw aside all of her plans and the work she'd done to stick with _jus nou drein jus daun_?”

Put like that, it did seem ridiculous. Gideon wasn't especially fond of the man, but Titus had at least always seemed like a reasonably intelligent person. It would have been utterly out of character for Lexa to have ever believed Titus' story, though, that somehow this Skaikru boy had gotten all the way into Clarke's chambers in the tower, passed all the guards, _including them_ , and then shot her. And even if, for some impossible reason, Lexa _had_ swallowed that tale whole, that Titus still seemed to believe that he could get her onto a war footing with Skaikru again, after everything that had happened….

“Fucking ridiculous,” Roz added. “How the hell has that guy been Fleimkepa for all these years and no one realized what a dolt he is?”

Murphy was chuckling from his saddle. Clarke just looked all the more heartbroken and confused. Gideon had to admit that he felt terrible for her, too, even amidst his own grief over the loss of his Commander.

“You're right, Roz. None of it makes any sense,” he admitted.

“That's life,” Murphy agreed. “Nothing makes sense and we all die for no reason.”

“Shut up, Murphy,” Clarke said flatly.

“He's not wrong,” Roz grumbled. Gideon shot him a withering look, but Roz just shook his head. “That man just killed our heda, Gid. For no reason at all. It's going to send our people into chaos, maybe back into war, depending on who becomes the next Commander. Whole lotta us about to do some more dying.”

“Lexa's spirit will choose better than that, Roz,” Gideon argued.

“You mean the AI?” Murphy said.

“What? I don't...no I mean the Spirit of the Commander,” Gideon answered, confused. “What's an AI?”

“Artificial Intelligence,” Clarke said. “It's a computer program. Sort of. And there was one...inside...Lexa.” Gideon heard her choke back another sob as she spoke the final words.

“Your boy Titus removed it after he killed her,” Murphy added helpfully.

“I don't know what this means,” Gideon said, more confused than ever.

“It means your precious heda was basically a robot,” Murphy said drolly. Clarke, whose horse was closest to his at that point, snapped out a closed fist and punched her friend square in the mouth. There was a short, sharp crack as bone met bone, and Murphy wobbled hard, barely able to stay in his saddle.

“Shut the fuck up, Murphy,” she growled, low and steady, in the voice Gideon and Roz had heard only when Wanheda was at her most serious. Murphy, to his credit, did choose to hold his tongue. Gingerly he dabbed at the trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth. “It just means...it means Lexa may have been connected, mentally, to the consciousnesses of past Commanders,” she explained, working it out for herself as she spoke. “But she was still _Lexa_.”

“So the Spirit of the Commander is just some _tek_ thing?” Roz asked, incredulous. Clarke nodded.

“Why does this matter?” Gideon demanded suddenly. He'd had enough. It was too much to process in one morning. They were approaching the five mile perimeter that was being established around Arkadia and would need to be on alert to answer any sentries, lest they be mistaken for enemy and cut down in their saddles. “We need to get off the main road, try to avoid any of the blockade. We can't run the risk of someone taking issue with our having Skaikru with us outside the boundary, even if it is Wanheda _._ ”

They went off into the deeper woods, picking their way between the moss covered trees and stony ruins. As they went, Gideon and Roz listened as the two Skaikru conversed uneasily with one another. Clarke had called this Murphy a “friend” but it was clear the relationship was not so clear cut as that.

“Look, I'm sorry I called your girlfriend a robot, Clarke,” Murphy was saying.

“She's wasn't my—” Clarke began, cutting herself off abruptly and going silent again instead.

“It's clear you loved each other. Even I'm not so stupid I couldn't see that,” he went on. “It's just that...look, I was with Jaha before I got caught and brought to Titus. Jaha's been peddling these chips that link people up to an AI called ALIE. It basically turns them into brainwashed weirdos. 'No pain, no hate, no envy,' he says. Which sounds pretty robotic to me, not to mention no fun.”

“And you think these _chips_ are the same as the thing that was in our heda?” Roz asked.

“I dunno if they're the same, or even directly connected, but I think it's safe to say they're related. Turns out your whole culture came from the same place ours did. I told Titus as much when he was beating the shit out of me, but as you can see, he didn't take it well.”

Roz gave a wry chortle. “Zealots will do that.”

“They call it the City of Light, the happy place you apparently go to when you swallow the chip,” Murphy went on. Clarke perked up a little at that. “I guess ALIE just uploads your brain to the City, makes you all blissed out and compliant, and then can use you for...I dunno, whatever the hell a genocidal AI wants, I guess.”

“What do you mean?” Gideon asked.

“ALIE is what caused the fucking apocalypse in the first place, turns out,” he said. “I got to see the home movie version of what happened. Basically, her programmers told her to fix the world and she figured the best way to do that was to nuke everyone.” Murphy laughed. “Can't say I blame her.”

“ _Lexa's still in there.”_

Roz and Gideon both looked around at Clarke, her eyes suddenly steely with intent.

“What?” Murphy asked, absently biting at a hang nail on his finger as he did.

“If the AI uploads a person's consciousness, then Lexa's is there, and in theory it could be put back into a body, _it could be reversed,_ ” she explained. “Maybe any body but probably easiest to put it back in the original, if she's still...if it was recent enough. If there are still threads of _her_ there….”

Gideon didn't like the sound of where Clarke was going with the line of thought, nor the look of calm determination now on her face.

“You can't go back there, Wanheda. It's far too dangerous.”

The blonde met his eye for a fleeting moment, then suddenly reached out to wrench his spear from his hand. Gideon hadn't been expecting the lightning-quick move. She disarmed him and promptly whirled the butt of the weapon around and against the side of his head, knocking him out of the saddle entirely. As he tumbled to the forest floor, in pain and disoriented, Gideon heard Roz howl with rage. He tried to get back to his feet but was knocked down again by a wave of dizziness. There was the sound of a brief scuffle, Roz grunting, Murphy shouting something, and then the rapid-fire thump of hooves galloping away. By the time Gideon was able to get back to his feet, Clarke and her horse were gone. Roz was slumped over in his saddle nursing a large, bloody gash across the entire front of his chest. Murphy was standing on the ground holding the reins of his horse several paces away, looking stunned.

“Roz, are you all right?” Gideon called as he ran to his lover's side.

“What the hell is wrong with her? We were trying to _help_!” the redhead moaned. Gideon helped Roz down out of the saddle, then fetched a bandage from his saddlebag and helped him wrap it around the wound. As he finished, Gideon watched Murphy climb back onto his own horse. He didn't have any particular desire to stop the boy from going. They'd been intent on helping Clarke return to her people. This Murphy had done nothing but sow doubt and confusion, and he'd be happy to see him go.

“Well, I guess thanks for the horse, but I don't have any desire to go to Arkadia,” Murphy said. “Um, sorry about your friend.” And then he kicked the beast and disappeared back down the road. Roz spat after him.

“Good riddance.”

“What do we do now?” Gideon asked after helping Roz back into the saddle and remounting his own horse.

“I don't know,” Roz said plainly. They led their rides back out onto the road at a slow walk, then stopped.

“Should we go after her? Try to, I don't know, help? Or just go back to being guards and hope no one is really paying attention to us anyway?”

Roz sighed, then winced at the pain in his cut open flesh. “We go back, we either have Titus trying to kill us, or worse, forcing us to pretend we don't know anything and just go along with whatever nonsense happens next. I'm not really keen on any of those options, though, truth be told.”

Gideon thought for a moment, watching as his lover struggled with what was clearly a great deal of pain. He wished they were back at the tower, where they could call on the healer to help, and then just curl up in bed for awhile. But Roz was right. There was nothing but death waiting for them there.

“Fuck this shit,” he blurted. Roz looked momentarily startled, then smiled. “Let them think we're dead. And we'll just disappear, and go somewhere to write our own damn story for once.”

“I love you,” Roz said by way of answer.

Gideon leaned over the gap between their horses and kissed Roz full on, letting all of his frustration and sadness and love and hunger pour out in the action. Finally, the two pulled away, breathing heavily.

“Let's get out of this shit show, then,” Gideon said. They pointed their horses back into the woods, in a direction that would eventually lead them to the coast. Seemed as good a place to start as any.

“I wish we would have thought to do this before, and brought Clarke and Lexa along,” Roz mused as they rode.

“You know they would have never gone for it. They'd never leave their people like that.”

“Yeah,” Roz agreed, sullen. “Too bad their people are idiots. They're both too good for this world.”

“Maybe Clarke will succeed,” Gideon said, trying to sound hopeful. “Maybe they'll get to write their own story, too.”

“Maybe,” Roz said. “I have an idea, though.”

He pulled a knife out from a sheath strapped to his thigh. It was the knife he'd won from Gideon earlier in the day. Roz flipped it in the air and caught it by the handle. Gideon gave him a quizzical look.

“This will make as much sense as anything else that's happened today,” Roz added. And then he flung the knife hard into the air, in a clearing between trees. It flew up further than it had any right to, above the tops of the branches and into the bright blue sky, where the blade suddenly seemed to pierce some invisible veil. A spider web of cracks opened in the firmament, splitting the sky into a hundred pieces. Bits of blue began to fall, and a loud, grinding, metal-on-metal sound pierced the air. Gideon and Roz both clutched at their ears in pain, keeping their eyes on the spectacle unfolding above them.

Where Gideon had expected, for whatever reason, to see black behind the blue sky as it broke, instead there was a blinding white light that spilled out and burned their eyes and skin. The landscape around them—the trees, rocks, plants, _everything—_ began to burn without fire, dissolving into that bright light. Gideon watched in amazement as his own horse began to disappear underneath him; Roz's, too.

At last, he and Roz stood in nothing but white. They looked around, bewildered, Roz's hand suddenly in his, holding on tightly.

Two human figures materialized in what Gideon assumed was the “distance,” such as it was in that formless place. They were walking toward he and Roz, steadily growing in size, slowly resolving into recognizable shapes.

“ _Heda,_ ” Roz whispered.

Lexa and Clarke, to be exact. Gideon stopped breathing for a moment. Both women strode toward them, seemingly unhurt, their clothes clean, even Clarke's hair washed and braided.

“We're safe here,” Lexa said once they'd finally come to a stop just paces from the two men.

“Where is...here?” Gideon asked.

“Reset,” Clarke answered. “I put Lexa's mind back into her own body. Long story.” A knowing look passed between the two. Clarke went on. “But it was clear that the AI's source code was corrupted. If you've noticed a lot of weird shit happening lately, that was probably why. Basically, we wiped out this whole stupid world and restarted, still as ourselves, but with a clean slate.”

“We can do whatever we want, now,” Lexa added, serene. She and Clarke exchanged another knowing glance that made Gideon want to look away, it seemed so intensely private. 

Roz was characteristically blunt. “We'll need our own beds for that, I think.” Gideon slapped him across the chest. He noticed that Roz's wound had completely disappeared.

Clarke smiled rakishly. “It's as good a place to start as any.” It was Lexa's turn to blush. “Bonus, no stray bullets to kill the mood.”

Roz laughed out loud at that. “I always did like you, Wanheda.”

“Please, call me Clarke. No more Wanheda _.”_

“No more heda, either,” Lexa added.

“All right, fair enough,” Roz agreed. “So what now?”

“Now?” Lexa said, one slender eyebrow raised knowingly. “Now we make something better.”


End file.
